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Nintendo has announced a handful of games set for launch on the Wii U through the spring and summer. Releases include the exclusive Sonic: The Lost World, a new version of Super Luigi U, and Mario and Sonic: Winter Games. Some of these unreleased games will be available for play at Best Buy during E3 prior to release.

Super Luigi U, which will be available as DLC for New Super Mario Bros. U, will include the character Nabbit from the original game as a multiplayer character that cannot take damage from enemies but is also incapable of getting power-ups. The game will be released as DLC for $19.99 or as a standalone version for $29.99 on July 26 in Europe and August 25 in North America.

Nintendo provided few details regarding Sonic: The Lost World except that it will come to both the Wii U and Nintendo 3DS, with more details to come during E3 in June. The game represents a partnership between Nintendo and Sega, two formerly feuding companies. As for the Olympics-oriented Mario and Sonic, playable events will include skiing, snowboarding, skating, and bobsledding.

Nintendo also revealed that the games Yakuza 1 and Yakuza 2 will make their way to the Wii U console. Arriving in August, the games will take advantage of the second-party perspective offered by the tablet-like GamePad controller but will only be released in Japan.

In addition to the new games announcement Nintendo stated that it will set up many of its new games in Best Buy locations throughout the US during the week of E3 so that consumers can check the games out as they’re being announced. Nintendo emphasized that its E3 presentations will strictly concern games, rather than new hardware, as has been the case over the last couple of years with the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U.

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Casey Johnston
Casey Johnston is the former Culture Editor at Ars Technica, and now does the occasional freelance story. She graduated from Columbia University with a degree in Applied Physics. Twitter@caseyjohnston

16 Reader Comments

Sonic racing sold best on Wii U, so making a new Sonic platformer exclusive to that platform makes a lot of sense. And like Lego City, it's another 3rd party collaborative title which is a clever way for Nintendo to get exclusives without developing a whole game.

Why on earth would Yakuza 1 and 2 not be brought stateside? I thought Yakuza 3 or 4 or whatever one they're on now was a relatively big hit in the West, and the Wii U is sure hurting for games right now.

Sonic racing sold best on Wii U, so making a new Sonic platformer exclusive to that platform makes a lot of sense. And like Lego City, it's another 3rd party collaborative title which is a clever way for Nintendo to get exclusives without developing a whole game.

But those Yakuza 1/2 ports are a head-scratcher.

Off topic, but Sonic All-Stars Racing Transformed was literally my favorite console game of 2012. Someone online somewhere posted about how surprisingly good it was, I thought "no way" and looked up a couple of videos, and drove out to buy it that same day. It is the best kart-style racing game I've played in over a decade, hands-down. That game oozes stupid fun (although the Burning Rangers course can go die in a fire). Strange days we live in, when I am sitting here praising a kart-racer with licensed characters.

Uh, Casey, SEGA has been making games for Nintendo platforms since about 2001 or so, so the whole "feuding companies" thing is kinda ancient history.

And you might also want to mention that the Yakuza games were originally on the PS2.

Yeah, that's cause Sega lost the feud. If you were around for the 16 bit wars seeing Mario and Sonic together on a Nintendo console will always bring back memories of The Great Feud. I guess I now understand why my grandfather still refers to Japanese people as "the enemy!"

Demoing games that are showing at E3 is actually a pretty cool idea, but doesn't Nintendo creating partnerships with both Best Buy and Sega seem somehow appropriate?

Sega and Nintendo have a long history of working toegether. Before the "1980's Console Wars" they worked to push the players in the Arcade space out of the market by brining the same experience into our homes.

What happen after that intial push was sort of ironc, they sort of turned into a double headed snake, and started to attack each other. You could say one of those heads was able to beat the other, and they are back, to their symbionic partnership.

There were very few differences between the Sega and Nintendo consoles, they went about doing the samething, a different way and called it different things.

Sort of like the war between Direct X and OpenGL.

Until the second generation of consoles were released Nintendo and Sega had a love-hate partnership, their friendship, meant the demise of both their enemy. Their partnership has a small speak no evil say no evil type clause in it, and Nintendo sort of ignored it and came out with the 8-bit Nintendo console.

Starting with Fire Emblem, Nintendo is one of the last to join the DLC party. Which could be a good or bad thing. We get more from them instead of waiting 3-4 years between release. But then the next release might not be as good if to much is focused on DLC and not something really new.

I imagine it is because there aren't a whole lot of people who own a Wii U yet. Presumably playing Wii U demos in Best Buy might encourage someone to buy the Wii U right there at Best Buy.

Microsoft did this years ago on Xbox live during E3. There were a bunch of demos available and marketed it as "E3 in your living room" or some such. There's no real reason Nintendo couldn't do this as well, especially since this will only be at around 100 best buy stores. I guarantee more rural stores (like the one here on the Vermont/New Hampshire border) won't see any of this.

I imagine it is because there aren't a whole lot of people who own a Wii U yet. Presumably playing Wii U demos in Best Buy might encourage someone to buy the Wii U right there at Best Buy.

Almost definitely. Also, remember how Nintendo framed their initial announcement not to have a press conference this year. They said something to the effect of "we're bringing E3 to the consumer." By having demos at kiosks in a public location, they can sell this in that exact way: they're bringing the show floor experience (lines for the demo, palpable excitement, potentially some light cosplay, etc.) to people across the country (world?). I doubt this is the last we'll hear of this plan, and I wouldn't be surprised if they expand the program in a few weeks when it gets closer to drum up another wave of excitement/curiosity.

Really, the winner here is the average idiot like me who can't make it to E3, who now can touch these demos himself instead of reading some overly optimistic preview coverage on a gaming website that will later lambaste the game. Also, Best Buy. The ball's in every store's court to make this seem like THE destination event for gamers in the area.

Starting with Fire Emblem, Nintendo is one of the last to join the DLC party. Which could be a good or bad thing. We get more from them instead of waiting 3-4 years between release. But then the next release might not be as good if to much is focused on DLC and not something really new.

I hope this Lost world game ia just as good as sonic colours, my favorite sonic game in recent memory, having said that this is on my radar alongside wonderful 101 and pikmin 3, i think this games will help the WiiU situation a little bit, of course with the Wind waker HD game too.

As for the demos on Best Buy i think is a good idea, they addresing one of the problems of the WiiU, a lot of people thinks is a Wii peripheral, not a new console, with this hands on demos on Best Buy could help correct the issue, i think it is a nice idea on their part, especially because not everybody can attend the E3 conference, therefore they might reach a lot of people with this.

I've been very disappointed with my Wii U... I have literally purchased only one game (that being Super Mario) because that is the only game partially viable to get - besides Nintendo Land. If they seriously want to try and compete with the other consoles, they first and foremost need to release games! I've had this console for at least 3 months, and I haven't touched it after the 3 weeks we played Nintendo Land and Super Mario non-stop.